Well, for now we’re not going to pursue the house any more. The owners just aren’t ready to be flexible enough. We’ll give them a few months of having to pay two mortgages and then see how they feel. Or maybe we’ll have found something else by then.

This coming weekend we will be going out again with the Realtor. I sent him a list of 13 houses that I want to see. They range from dinky on the order of “HELLO! One elbow is in the toilet and one is in the kitchen sink, but isn’t it CHARMING!” to rather expansive with acreage (and why is it in our price range, Hmmmm?). I’ll be sure to give a full report when I get back.

Which won’t be until the following Tuesday. I’m being forced to take Martin Luther King Jr. day off because Cole’s daycare will be closed. It’s not that I’m bummed about it, I’d just rather keep my vacation days for a REAL vacation. Like Baja. Or Hawaii. Or even Big Sur (in a yurt!).

Until then…

Weekend, weekend, who stole the weekend? All weekends should be three days, so I sayeth, so it shall be. With no pay cut, too. And, while I’m dreaming, free shoes and massages all around! YAY!

But really, I think the most “exciting” thing that happened this weekend was that Cole did a header into the brick at my parent’s house and busted his lip again. He actually caught himself with his hands on the edge, but his head was too big and moving too fast to stop completely. Poor kiddo. It wasn’t anything a popsicle couldn’t put right, though, and I’m sure his future modeling career will not be jeopardized.

Other than that, my mother and I drove around and looked at houses. One place was about the right size for a hobbit and was lavishly decorated in crucifixes and garish colors. Sooooooooo appealing.

The only other place that we actually walked into was a slice of hell right from my husband’s childhood. If you know what his childhood was like, or you know the worst that this particular county has to offer, I needn’t say any more. But, since I know that some of my lovely readers are blissfully unaware, I will attempt to describe.

To start, it was a manufactured home on 2 acres and they were asking $299,000. When we drove up, there was another man there who was beating a hasty retreat after viewing the interior of the house. We should have known then to just turn around, but we parked instead.

The outside of the “house” was charmingly decorated with no less (and possible more) than 8 broken down cars, a random assortment of parts, and several bags of overflowing garbage lovliness. It achieved a look that I will call “junkyard chic”. There was a lovely, weathered shed that easily could have held any number of tools with which to dismember two unsuspecting females and a 14 month old baby, or possibly hold their bodies, or maybe that’s just where they kept the still.

We parked in mud. The “walkway” up to the “house” was covered in thin wooden sheets so that we wouldn’t sink into the ground.

When we walked up, we were greeted by an obviously drunk (and who knows what else) bearded man who was wearing a dirty t-shirt that was giving us ample glimpses of his huge, hairy stomach and swilling a can of beer nestled in a “coozy.” We asked if we could go up to the house and he told us to wait until he could roll his cigarette and he’d take us up and show us around (in other words, murder us foully).

After he finished rolling his cig, he told us that we should watch out for “Zeus”, the dog. My mother (who is just a tad afraid of dogs) said “Are you telling us that you have a dangerous dog?” Bearded Man (BMan) said “Shit no! He’s a friendly dog, but he’s too friendly. He’ll jump up on you and take you out.”

Fucking fantastic. I REALLY want to go up there now.

So we walked up to the house where Zeus was on a big, thick, dirty chain next to the stairs. My mom asked if it was safe to go up the stairs and BMan said “Oh sure- that’s why we have The Board”, indicating another, rather worn, thin piece of wood that was keeping Zeus, the old sweetie pie, from gnawing off our feet at the ankles. We made it inside and immediately wished that we hadn’t.

The “house” was a wreck, and you could tell that they had worked very hard for quite a while to even get it that good (The Trash! The Filth! The Stench!). The TV was playing some show that I think may have been “Pouring Stuff That Looks Like Vomit Into Bowls and Stirring It Up.” BMan started shouting for his woman to come out and then said “Oh shit. I just realized she went to get me my lunch.” Precious. BMan tried to show us around, but the fella didn’t even know the word for the thing in which you can sit and have water pour in from a tap with which you can bathe (tub) or the place in or near the kitchen where you can store your non-perishable food items (pantry). We had clearly caught him at a bad moment.

BMan had been doing some painting, but some reddish, rather alarming stains on the wall of one bedroom made me wonder how bad everything he painted was that he elected to do those walls first. Fucking scary, it was.

There was a charming little rectangular, cement hole in the ground “pond” out back (BMan says “It’s got fish!”), but no stairs out the back door to get to it. There was a huge slope failure right above the “pond” that was threatening to sweep the whole “house” away in a wave of red clay at the next heavy rain.

Let me stop here and just wrap it all up in one word : NIGHTMARE.

When we left (just scootching past the darling Zeus), my mom said “I’m so glad that the woman wasn’t there. I do not want to meet the woman who lives in that house.” I have to agree. Maybe it’s snobby… well, yeah- it is snobby. But you go there and try to keep an open mind.

So now I think I’ll do most of my house shopping with my 6’8″ Realtor. And maybe a stun gun.